Mexican soldiers killed near pipeline

Gangs use fuel thefts to control towns

Angry residents of Palmarito set up roadblocks Thursday in protest of the army crackdown.

MEXICO CITY — Gunmen using residents as human shields opened fire on a Mexican army patrol investigating fuel pipeline thefts in clashes that left four soldiers and six attackers dead, the military said Thursday.

The confrontation late Wednesday in the central state of Puebla marked an escalation of recent conflicts in which fuel thieves have largely taken control of some towns in the “Red Triangle” area east of Mexico City.

Mexico’s Defense Department said attackers hiding behind women and children killed two soldiers and wounded a third in the initial confrontation.

“In light of this situation, the soldiers decided not to return fire because the attackers were using women and children as a human shield,” the department said in a statement.

The army called for reinforcements, and about 1,000 troops and police were sent in.

Hours later, gunmen again attacked the patrol with armored cars and high-powered rifles, killing two more soldiers and wounding nine, while three attackers were killed, according to the military, which said the assailants used five vehicles, three of them armored.

Puebla state officials said later that another three attackers had died.

Angry residents of Palmarito set up roadblocks Thursday in protest of the army crackdown, demanding the release of some of the dozen residents detained in the clashes.

Federal police said hours later that traffic had been restored in both directions along the toll highway between the cities of Puebla and Cordoba.

The army has increasingly faced civilian resistance to drug-eradication patrols, with women and children trying to block soldiers from cutting down opium poppy fields in recent months in the southern state of Oaxaca.

But it is the pipeline thefts — thousands of illegal taps drilled into state-owned pipelines every year — where local populations have been recruited en masse by gangs that often distribute drugs, steal gasoline and diesel and carry out extortion and kidnapping. They are known in Mexico as “huachicoleros,” a term that refers to illegal or subpar fuel sold from plastic tanks on roadsides.

Some townspeople in Puebla and other states have largely based their local economies on fuel stolen from the pipelines, sometimes collecting gasoline and diesel in buckets when a tap leaks and gets out of control.

According to official figures, Puebla accounted for about 314 of the 1,984 illegal pipeline taps discovered last year in Mexico.

But the extent of the gangs’ control in some parts of Puebla is unusual. In March, three Puebla state detectives were kidnapped and killed by a fuel-theft gang known as The Bucanans. Most of the local police and the mayor of the Puebla town of Atzitzintla were arrested after, Puebla officials said, they detained the agents and helped turn them over to the gang.

A raid days later by 500 police and soldiers turned up 87 suspects and 16 rifles, hand grenades and 4,600 rounds of ammunition.

Since then, 647 raids have been carried out across Puebla, leading to the seizure of nearly 1,000 vehicles, almost a half-million gallons of stolen fuel, the discovery of 125 illegal taps and the detention of 318 people.

The fuel is often sold from large plastic containers in metal cages in old pickups parked in vacant lots or along highways.